


designed for crash testing

by iridescent



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreamsharing, Gen, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22061104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescent/pseuds/iridescent
Summary: Presumptuous jealousy had been the impetus – the reason he had kissed Eames in the first place, with sharp teeth and misplaced ire, uncaring of reciprocation and ramifications.Rejection hadn’t hurt; he had been prepared for it, after all.
Relationships: Arthur & Eames (Inception), Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 79





	designed for crash testing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lezzerlee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lezzerlee/gifts).



> Once again, I find myself nostalgic and with enough time to do something about it. 
> 
> Originally started in response to [this gorgeous artwork](https://lezzerlee.tumblr.com/post/29564892253/my-artwork-for-inception-reverse-bang) by lezzerlee. The fact that I didn’t finish this story in time, many years ago, still fills me with much guilt. 
> 
> Title from ‘sleep through the static’ by Jack Johnson.

The meeting place is remote and hidden, a secluded park ringed by a forest of frosted fir trees. Arthur’s boots crunch on brittle grass as he turns his face up to the ashen and uniform sky, searching for sun. He passes by a shallow and retreating lake, its murky depths uninviting.

Eames is waiting, seated on a sturdy bench, two takeaway cups in hand.

“It’s been a while,” Arthur ventures when within reach, a customary greeting, accepting a proffered cup. Eames nods, mouth twitching into a wan smile.

As has become his habit, he catalogues the differences from when they last met: the fatigue evident in Eames’ sallow features, the sunken shadows beneath his eyes, the mottled bruising at his jaw. There is a nick at his neck, recent and red. Arthur is transfixed by it, something ugly and inexplicable roiling in his gut.

“The Kwon job went belly-up,” Eames mutters although Arthur hadn’t asked (never asks), peeling the plastic lid from his cup and licking the froth from its underside. The pink sliver of his tongue is lurid against the washed-out landscape.

“I know,” Arthur replies, unthinkingly, warmth suffusing through corrugated paper into his chilled fingers. Belatedly, he realizes his gaffe; he hates affirming that he does in fact keep tabs on Eames.

“I know you do,” Eames counters, almost mocking, never one to be outdone. “I’m telling you anyway.”

***

“What do you know about inception?” 

Arthur squints at Eames, bemused. His pen stutters, leaving an ugly blot of ink on the otherwise pristine page. “Nothing that you don’t already know. It can’t be done.” 

Even as he shapes the syllables, deep down, Arthur knows he doesn’t really believe that to be true. 

“It’s perfectly possible, just bloody difficult,” Eames had said once, frenetic with adrenaline and alcohol. He had been young then, sweeter in his manner, simpler in his actions. 

Eames paces, caged and cantankerous. “I wouldn’t be so sure. I’ve heard whispers, rumors, of a couple who are obsessed with the notion of it.” 

“The Cobbs,” Arthur interjects, considered. He knows of the rumors too. He knows of the Cobbs, intelligent and incandescent. 

“They’re dangerous,” Eames scowls. “Foolhardy.” 

“Why did you return their last call, then?”

Eames looks away. The tips of his ears are red. 

“You know why,” he says, gruffly. 

Arthur smiles thinly. The ink blot darkens, deepens, bleeding through paper. 

He does. 

***

There is warm pressure upon his ribcage and a voice, adamant and aggravating, whispering in his head.

He opens his eyes.

Eames is leaning over him, visibly amused, palm placed flat against his sternum. Discomfited, Arthur scrambles to sit up. The space behind his eyeballs throbs dully, indistinct but insistent. He doesn’t remember being asleep; in fact, his mind is sharp, alert.

“What is it – what do you want?” he asks scratchily, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, bare toes curling into the coarse carpet of the motel room. Where are his shoes?

“Come under with me.” Eames is kneeling on the floor now, briskly unlocking a polished PASIV case and exposing its gleaming innards: masses of tubing, golden hued vials, valves and pistons. He turns to grin at Arthur, eyes electrifyingly bright, deft hands already retracting an infusion line. “I want to show you something.”

Arthur huffs out a vague complaint, idly itching at the spot on his chest where Eames’ palm had lain. As there is little use in reasoning with Eames when he is like this, all contagious child-like exuberance, he slides off the lumpy mattress to sit cross-legged next to the silver briefcase.

“Fine, but it had better be good.”

***

Arthur blinks against the brilliant midday glare, an orange glow bleeding through the thin skin of his eyelids. Grass prickles against his stiff neck and lax limbs.

Sound eventually seeps in, motley and confusing: low laughter, the clink of cutlery, the husky murmur of mournful music drifting in the still and somnolent summer air.

It is impossible to formulate a coherent thought just yet; his senses are still intoxicated by the indolent, viscous warmth.

“Get up, you lazy sod,” Eames is laughing, looming over him. Light haloes his hair and catches in his eyelashes, highlighting the sparse fuzz along his jawline and the faint scar at his neck. He is awash in sun, golden-skinned and close at hand; all it requires is for Arthur to reach up and –

He rolls over instead, face pressed into sweet-smelling grass, grunts when the gun clipped inside the waistband of his trousers shifts uncomfortably against the small of his back.

They’ve been through this rigmarole before, long ago.

“I’m sorry,” Eames had said, once, palms braced firm and unyielding against Arthur’s chest. Mouth bitten pink, made unwittingly and refreshingly honest by youth and inexperience, more solemn than one would expect. “You’re not the one I want.”

Arthur had already known that. Indeed, presumptuous jealousy had been the impetus – the reason he had kissed Eames in the first place, with sharp teeth and misplaced ire, uncaring of reciprocation and ramifications.

Rejection hadn’t hurt; he had been prepared for it, after all.

***

“Why are you here?” the professor asks, perfunctory and clipped, continuing to chalk theorems upon a blackboard. The lecture theatre is deserted, dusty, motes of muted light permeating through grimy windows.

“Curiosity,” Arthur answers truthfully, leaning against a hard-backed seat.

He had slipped past Eames earlier, falling in line with a cohort of harried businessmen as they hurried through the train station, intent on making his way to the half-forgotten and dilapidated building nestled in a select corner of Eames’ sprawling urban cityscape.

Arthur has seen the building many times before, but has never had the courage to walk inside.

The fact that he is still here means that Eames is content to leave Arthur to his own devices – for now. Arthur intends to make full use of the time he has left.

Miles turns to face him, flickering in and out of focus, arching an eyebrow. He is the quintessential image of an academic, bored and bespectacled.

“Not every projection loitering in the recesses of someone’s mind is a sordid secret that has been closeted away, as you well know. Some of us simply dislike being disturbed. All I am is a leftover, a throwback, a memento,” he says, crisp and assured, as if reciting from a text, “an unstable fragment of dream-space, incomplete and superfluous.”

Arthur hesitates; no matter how cautiously he selects the words, they will sound blunt, rude, accusatory. Tact has never been a strong suit. “Why does he keep you around, then?”

If Miles is affronted, it doesn’t show. He nods at his semi-translucent fingers ruefully, spectacles edging down the bridge of his nose. “Eames was very young when I came into being. Not one of his finer attempts, admittedly. It was one of the first things I taught him, too – not to hold on, not to become attached. But he still seems disinclined to let me go. So, I remain.”

Arthur understands, keenly. Eames is an inveterate hoarder, a collector of details and dispositions. He soaks up personalities and philosophies as parched earth would water, indiscriminate and reckless, often creating no distinctions between self and other.

“Where would you go?” he prompts, inquisitiveness ultimately surpassing restraint. “If you could, I mean.”

Seeming older than his apparent years, the projection smiles.

“I’d return home.”

***

Although he need never admit it aloud, Arthur feels safest when walking within Eames’ subconscious.

It’s a hot day, mid-summer, at a traditional county fair. He registers the pungent odor of barn animals, sweat-sheened faces, festive stalls, and raucous chatter. Standing still, shirtsleeves rolled up to elbows and hands in his pockets, he breathes in buttered corn and fried dough.

He recognizes it in his bones, innate and visceral; he is at home here, acknowledged as friend not foe.

Projections ignore him, even when he surreptitiously weaves two extra loop-the-loops into a twisting rollercoaster track. Emboldened, he transforms a lonely hot-dog stand into a carousel. Within seconds, it is a whirling kaleidoscope of color and children.

“What do you think?” A woman appears at his side, leggy and wild-haired, holding a stick of cotton candy. To their left, a log flume hurtles down a ramp into waiting water, drenching occupants and onlookers alike. Arthur steps back a fraction too late; the spray spatters his trouser legs.

She laughs at him, insouciant.

“Magnificent,” he says, frank as always in his appraisal, though he’s referring more to the forge than the backdrop.

“I think he’ll like this, the old man.” Her tone is wistful, fond, a faultless mimicry of the ailing client’s long-dead daughter. “Those rickety rollercoasters were our favorites. We’d line up for ages under the roasting sun.”

Eames so rarely accepts jobs based in therapy that it’s easy to overlook how skilled at it he is.

***

“Watch out!”

The warning is too late. The tumblers slip through his nerveless grasp, liquid sloshing against his fingers, and then shatter upon the scuffed hardwood floor. Amber alcohol trickles out from the epicenter, glinting under the dim pub lighting.

Arthur blinks, breathes, present again.

“Fuck, sorry,” he frowns, stooping in a half-hearted attempt to collect the more intact shards of glass. That just brings on a second wave of dizziness.

The bartender waves him away with a belligerent scowl. “How about I bring the next round directly to your table?”

Arthur acquiesces, abashed, wiping his clammy palms against the smooth grain of his jeans. The fuzziness in his vision clears with each step.

He’s gotten used to it, the periodic and inevitable lapses, the byproduct of a life spent walking in dreams. He always comes back, of course. So far, at least. Over the years, he has learned to work around the inconvenience.

“All right?” Eames asks when he flops back into the booth, nonchalant, as if he hadn’t vanished moments earlier while Arthur was getting their drinks.

There is a pint of untouched Guinness by his hand. He glides it across the table towards Arthur, a wordless apology.

“Fine. What was with the disappearing act?” He has an idea but, feeling a little petty, wants to hear Eames say it. The bitter-burnt tang of stout is rich on his tongue, heavy and heartening.

“I got thrown out, as you very well know, you wanker.” Eames laughs, crooked and sheepish. His voice is hushed, furtive. “Fell right off my seat, like a bleeding novice. Had to charm my way back in.”

Arthur shakes his head, trying to contain his dimples. “You’re ridiculous.”

Eames shrugs, not bothering to deny it. He drums his fingertips, speckled with ink, against a notepad. The most recent sheet overflows with cramped spidery script. “So, where were we? The mother?”

“The mother,” Arthur confirms, resuming their previous conversation, tracing the embossed lettering on the half-empty glass. “The mark’s always going to confide in her over his wife. It’s second nature at this point. I doubt he even notices it.”

“She was his sole social support, growing up,” Eames says, scribbling a quick note upon an already-crowded margin. “Right. What about…”

***

They’re running out of time. The clock is ticking down relentlessly and Arthur can sense the tattered meshwork of the dream vibrating, strained, gradually tearing apart at the seams.

An ominous rumble echoes throughout the bank.

To hell with it, he decides, a Glock materializing in his hands. He’s useless here, watching and waiting. He’ll deal with the fallout, the anger, later.

Arthur always manages to execute his end of the agreement. It’s Eames’ team that invariably needs to shape up.

Eames looks dreadful, blood crusted down the front of his shirt and oozing down half of his face, swearing rapidly and colorfully as he reloads his semi-automatic whilst crouched down behind a teller’s counter.

The mark is not only militarized but a particularly brutal specimen; his projections are genuinely delighted at their intrusion, galvanized by the opportunity for target practice.

As he approaches, gun drawn but finger off the trigger, Eames’ head snaps up swiftly – his entire frame coils, readying to spring or dodge. The expression on his face when he identifies Arthur is priceless. It’s well worth the impending histrionics.

“The fuck—” Eames begins and then is providentially interrupted by something, or someone, exploding to their far right. As they flatten their backs against the counter, he hisses in Arthur’s ear, “You shouldn’t be here.”

Arthur snorts. He’s actively trying to help, and Eames chews him out for it. “You can criticize my choices later. Right now, you need to get to the safe. The extractor’s pinned down, won’t make it.”

There is a drawn-out moment where they just glare at each other mulishly, neither willing to back down. Arthur keeps an eye on the barricaded door – it won’t be long before the projections break it down. Unbelievably, Eames grimaces and looks away first. He runs a grimy hand over his face, smearing a streak of blood from cheek to jaw.

“How long?”

Arthur closes his eyes, concentrating on calculations and the instinctive beat that pulses beneath his skin, within his very bones. “Three minutes, max.”

“Don’t get shot.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “How long have I been doing this?”

“I mean it,” Eames says, fierce, squeezing his shoulder hard. And then he’s hobbling off, pistol clenched in his left hand, right arm hanging limp at his side. Arthur watches his back until he is around the corner and out of sight.

His skin feels aflame, the imprint of fingers searing through clothing.

***

“I'm,” Eames pauses awkwardly, takes a deep breath, nostrils flaring. “I'm not going to be back for a while.”

They’re seated at a nondescript diner, half-eaten eggs and a pot of cooling coffee between them. Their near identical black suits are crisp and well-pressed, black ties cleanly knotted.

“Taking a break?” Arthur says offhandedly, pushing a greasy square of toast around his congealed plate, an awful gnawing tightness in his chest. Fortunately, Eames takes that to be the entire sentence. The infinitely dangerous “from me?” remains unuttered, selfish and secret and shameful.

“Something like that.” Eames is avoiding eye contact, the line of his mouth stubborn, endlessly stirring his by now cold cup of coffee. “I just need to get away for a bit. Away from dreaming, away from jobs.”

“Right,” Arthur murmurs, as if in understanding, smooth and laconic. Without Eames, his existence is dreamless and indeterminate. His bubbling exultation about the success of the last con, the gratification of seeing the ruse he had suggested coming to fruition, evaporates.

It may be the last time he sees Eames, or it may not. He’s never sure, in these fragile moments, whether Eames will return.

In any case, he has no real say in the matter.

***

Later, as they meander towards an uncomfortable goodbye, Arthur finally asks.

“What was she like?”

Eames’ eyes are shuttered. “She was lovely.”

***

Eames has an unerring and irritating ability to find Arthur, wherever he is.

The words come out rusty from disuse, weary and exasperated. “Why do you bother telling me you’re leaving if you’re just going to come back?”

It gives me false hope, he could continue, bitter and brimming with ancient anger.

“I’m sorry,” Eames says, soft and sincere, hands clasped together as if in prayer. Today he is virtually a stranger, buried under layers of bulk and muscle, disguised by tanned skin and bleached hair. Even the cadence of his voice is rougher, gruffer. “But I need to talk through a job.”

“You’re always sorry,” Arthur accedes, sweet and spiteful.

He sighs, rubbing at his furrowed brow, already aware of his impending capitulation. “Let’s get to work, then.”

***

Eames is drunk, tripping over his own feet. He lurches, and the world seems to lurch with him. Arthur catches him before he falls flat on his face, though the vindictive part of him instantly regrets it.

“You’re fucking wasted, Eames.” He lowers his voice, mindful of the bartender’s stony gaze. “You know you shouldn’t come here when you’re like this. It never ends well.”

“I just wanted to see you,” Eames says, eyes wide, ostensibly innocent. He’s loud, and brash. They’re attracting too much attention, all eyes turned towards the spectacle.

He clamps a hand on Eames’ forearm, ushers him hurriedly out the door. Eames is compliant until they reach the sidewalk. Then, surprisingly nimble, he swivels around swiftly and pins Arthur to a nearby wall with his bulk. Arthur instantly relaxes, doesn’t struggle, though he does watch for an opening.

“Fuck.” His hand, large and rough and achingly familiar, cups Arthur’s cheek. The pad of his thumb rests against the sensitive skin under an eye, his fingers curl behind an ear. “How am I supposed to let you go?”

“Then don’t,” he says, asininely, reckless. It’s not like Eames will remember this later, when he wakes up with a hangover.

Eames gusts out a weighty sigh, rubbing his callused thumb back and forth along the bony ridge of Arthur’s cheekbone, infuriatingly gentle. It feels unnatural, uncharacteristic of the Eames he is used to.

Their faces are so close that his breath, hot and heavy and laced with cheap liquor, is like a physical touch – simultaneously repulsive and thrilling.

“You and I both know how unhealthy this is,” Eames says.

Arthur compresses his lips but the words, acerbic and accusatory, spill from his treacherous tongue regardless. “I certainly understand how unhealthy this is, Mr. Eames. Do you?”

Eames’ eyes are soft, sad. “It’s a good question.”

Arthur shoves him away at that point, resumes walking down the cobbled path.

Eames follows him, as he always does.

***

Maintaining a deliberate and prudent distance from the team, blending into the ubiquitous morning rush of pedestrians and traffic, Arthur takes his time exploring the boundaries of the maze. Cobb’s designs are impressive, ambitious and unconventional, but his greatest talent is being able to beguile the inherent suspicion of a target’s subconscious.

He reaches the periphery of the dream soon enough; though the city appears sprawling, endlessly expansive, in actuality its dimensions are restricted. Outwardly the paved street in front of him appears continuous, flanked by second-hand bookshops and thrift stores, leading to a public park. There are even people in the distance, conversing, bartering for trinkets. He faces his palms outward and pushes, testing, curious.

The scene (shops, people, park) undulates delicately, like stagnant pond water being disturbed, but does not yield. He wonders, absently, if it would be possible to physically rip through it, to encounter – what? Void, perhaps. Or crude and amorphous unconscious, the building blocks of a dream.

(Home, the projection of a professor had called it.)

Too late, cursing his carelessness, he senses another presence – foreign, uninvited. In an instant, there is a blade at his back and a sweet sinister voice in his ear.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, hushed and conspiratorial, nudging him forward until his forehead rests against the solid, simulated wall. As he contemplates taking a step, twisting out of her grip, the pressure of the blade deepens. “Please, don’t insult me. Consider the distance between my knife and your flesh.”

“Do it, then,” he goads though fear, traitorous and terrible, shivers through his skin.

“What spirited words! But why should I settle for a swift, boring death when,” the knife digs in, slicing easily through the flimsy cotton of his shirt and into him, “you bleed so beautifully. I’ll ask only once more. What are you doing here?”

“Working,” he grits out. She no doubt thinks he’s encroaching upon her territory.

The woman with Mal Cobb’s face laughs, low and brittle. The blade shifts and cuts again, wrenching a strangled grunt from his throat. “Is this how you convince yourself of your worth, your purpose? You do what he asks of you, like an obedient pup?”

“Better to be useful than discarded,” he remarks between shallow breaths, flippant, calculatingly cruel.

“He wouldn’t,” she hisses, vehement. The back of his shirt feels wet, slick with blood, sticks to his skin. “He promised.”

And then–

She disappears, dissipates, leaving Arthur trembling and furious.

The timer must–

***

Arthur nurses his perspiring glass, savoring the tang of expensive gin. Eames, cross-legged and cavalier, is pouring lukewarm tonic water into a second glass. The ice in the glass cracks, audible and satisfying.

A fan whirrs lethargically above their heads, more noise than efficacy. Arthur’s burgeoning displeasure is lulled by the oppressive humidity, his foul mood cajoled into a semblance of cordiality by the sibilant patter of monsoon rain.

Eames always plays to his advantage.

“Why are you here, Eames?” he allows, eventually. Silence accomplishes nothing. Eames will remain, steadfastly in Arthur’s orbit, until he gets what he came for. “What about the Naiker job?”

“What about it?” Eames replies, blandly, eternally evasive.

“Isn’t…won’t _he_ be there?” The name gets stuck in his throat. He forces it back down with a vitriolic swill of gin. He can’t help it, the age-old resentment that licks up his spine whenever he finds out who Eames will be working with.

Eames’ smile is carefully considered, melancholy. Arthur can’t see his eyes from this angle, his face is shrouded by the lengthening evening shadow. “He barely spares me a second glance. We’re not…anything. We just work together, sometimes.”

“So, I’m the stand-in?” he asks, quietly, deliberately.

“No,” Eames says, forcefully, indignant. His slouch remains lazy but his frame is abruptly tense. “It’s not like that.”

Once, Arthur would have believed him.

***

Arthur crawls up a berm, wriggling away from the ditch he had been sheltering in, stolen rifle cradled in his arms. There’s minimal goddamn cover in this makeshift desert – just low-lying shrubs, endless banks of blistering sand, and the charred husks of abandoned Humvees.

Sun beats down on the nape of his sweaty neck, harsh and unforgiving. His mouth is so dry that the insides of his lips are sticking to his teeth. He licks them reflexively, welcoming the sting.

Eames is a dick for accepting this job.

“We’re out of our depth here.”

Speak of the devil, he thinks, humorlessly.

Eames’ voice crackles over the radio, even, typically unruffled. “The mark’s mind is too bloody rigid, too well trained. I can’t even generate a fucking firearm.”

“We knew this going in. We knew that she’d been militarized by both Graham and Lavender.” Cobb sounds equally calm, despite the ruckus of gunfire filtering through his end of the comm. “Find another way to overpower her projections; I need more time to find the supply truck. Is Hearne with you?”

“No word from Hearne.” A thin thread of tension underlies Eames’ words now, hardly perceptible. Arthur’s chest twinges, unavoidable, unwanted. “Arthur think—”

Without warning the ground several paces in front of him bursts apart, hurling clods of dirt and metal fragments into the air.

He ducks, slithering half-way back down the berm, heart hammering and static spitting in his ears. A string of explosions, an entire minefield detonating, less than a click out from where he is. Christ. Thick, acrid columns of black smoke furl up to smother the sky. The radio transmission fizzles out eventually, leaving only silence.

Well, fuck.

Yet the dream isn’t crumbling. Eames must be still alive. Arthur tumbles down the embankment and runs, blatantly ignoring entrenched instincts and self-preservation, footfalls initially clumsy.

As he draws closer to the edge of the blast radius, he makes out two figures through the dispersing smoke. How they haven’t been simply obliterated, reduced to raw organs and splintered bone, he can hardly fathom.

The first man is splayed flat on his back, unmoving – Eames. The second man struggles doggedly towards him, sifting up clouds of desert dust with his scrabbling hands. Both are heavily wounded, bleeding out, approaching death. The scent of blood and explosives lingers in the stale air, iron-rich and nauseating.

The ground shudders, the landscape tilts.

An upended supply truck burns in the distance – the objective lost. It firms his resolve. Arthur hefts the stock of the rifle up to his shoulder, lines his eye with the scope.

Now on his knees, the second man stiffens – ever cautious, even with his back to Arthur. He manages to fumble intuitively for the disregarded rifle at his side and-

(Arthur depresses the trigger immediately, without pause or deliberation, unwilling to risk being sighted.)

-keels over with a soft flump.

Arthur exhales heat and relief. His fingers tremble, ever so slightly.

He steps forward, measured and wary, eyes invariably riveted upon the limp body – the dark and disheveled hair, the unnatural line of his neck, the arcing spray of red blood upon white sand.

They share a name, a face, a predilection for tasteful attire and polymer pistols. The difference is that the man dead at his feet is alive in the waking world whereas Arthur is a construct, a fabrication carved from dream and desire, merely cheap imitation.

( _You’re self-aware enough to realize that you’ll never be as complex, as satisfying, as the real deal_ , the projection of a professor had said to him once, poring over a blueprint, fingertips smudged with chalk dust, _so let me ask you this: why does he keep_ you _around?_ )

“Thank you,” Eames garbles, dark blood bubbling up between scorched lips.

“Yeah, yeah.” Arthur gently touches the muzzle to his lacerated forehead. “You owe me a beer, asshole.”

He fires, once.

The dream disintegrates.

Arthur closes his eyes, waiting as always for the moment he will breathe once more.


End file.
